Deer's Ears and Beautiful Places 

There are places I love. I am thinking of a lovely little valley of green grass and bracken fern and aspen and large old tall oaks with scattered pine. At the right time of year a plant grows there that is totally imposing. It makes me think of the jungle or the lush northwest forest. It goes by two names Monument Plant or Deer's Ears. I used to think it was two different plants and perhaps it is. It grows as tall as me or taller maybe 6 feet with whorls of big green leaves which gives it its name. It starts out looking like this:

Deer's Ears

Later in the season it puts up the huge stalk. It should have at the end of the stock a large red or blue cluster of flowers. But it doesn't. Look close at the stock and there are the flowers green in whorls at the base of the leaves. Regular whorls as you follow up the stalk and clustering toward the top.

Monument Plant

This area  I am thinking of south of Williams, AZ on the Kaibab National Forest lies at the head of a draw in the closest thing to a “cove” you will find in the southwest pine forest. The cove I refer to is a term used in the east for those moist, deep-soiled sites that grow tall beautiful hardwoods like tulip poplar and walnut. This is a different type of cove but shares the moist deep-soiled character though in a relative way compared to other sites in the southwest.

There are other similar places that sit at the base of steep hills that mostly face north topped by basalt rimrock. Bracken fern grows from the base of the rocks and pines are tall and oaks are large and grass is lush and green in spring and late summer. Sometimes these are the places that grow aspen. But everything we see is compared to everything else and these green places stand out from their surrounding dry ridges above and dominating pine forest below and all around. And when we enter there we know we are in a different place than the average. Though I love the average, plain old, pine forest of average grass and pine needles and pine trees large and small on rocky rough soil of clay and silt.

 

I love most to descend into these areas from a hot ridge of struggling pines and even cactus. To enter the shade of a massive old oak and wade through the high grass and maybe see a monument plant. But then again there is something special early in the morning or later in the afternoon when the shadows are long and the light is subdued and maybe it rained and the air is thick and almost misty and it smells like the wet summer pine forest which you must experience to know. It's then that I like to enter these coves from below and ascend to the base of the surrounding slopes on three sides of me at the head of this like the apse of a cathedral. And like the apse would be appropriate for altar and sanctuary to worship the creator. I should kneel and pray here to Him who authored this beauty to draw us to heaven like the worship and sacrifice of the altar. Drawing us up to heaven. Like the trees who point the way upward to Him. Hints of paradise. 

 

And I miss these places right now in winter but know the bare oaks and pines heavy with snow must be buried right now so that we can see the green and smell the lush and know the smell all the rest of the time. But I am lonely, longing for it.